Edit: Thanks to all the folks taking the time to read through this and correct my thinking. I’m seeing how I wound myself up into a kinda toxic headspace and appreciate the hand out of it.
Context: I spent way too much time on Reddit this week getting into dustups with people blaming Dearborn, Michigan for everything that’s wrong in the world. Turns out I’m too much of a pugilist to agitate correctly and I’m stuck unable to metabolize my disappointment that the libs are refusing to learn anything. I’ll get through it. Anyway, one of the discussions centered around users giving up their organ donor status because they don’t want their organs going to Trump voters.
My initial reaction was that it was spiteful and petty as fuck to rescind your organ donor status over an election not going your way*, and if I’d had more patience and less moral outrage I probably could’ve come up with some sort of clever observation that folks who were okay with waiting until after an election for meaningful action to be taken on a genocide were clearly okay with instrumentalizing the lives of others to achieve an outcome, so maybe they were throwing stones from inside a glass house. But, as I chewed on that argument a little more, I started to wonder. I didn’t really reflect a whole lot on checking the organ donor box; as a materialist I’m assuming I’m not going to need my organs if I meet an untimely demise and it makes sense to let someone else have them if they can do some good; ethics committees exist to make sure they’ll be put to good use. But , at the same time, an ethics committee signed off on a heart for Dick Cheney, a man so famously heartless he couldn’t even be bothered to properly thank the family of the kid whose heart he received. If I could add a clause to my organ donor registry excluding Dick Cheney from my organ donation, I would, even if the odds of him continuing to power his unholy grasp on life with my kidneys are astronomically low. If there’s anyone in this world who’s less entitled to even the organs he grew himself, it’s him.
And over the last year I’ve developed a pretty deep pessimism about Americans in general. I stupidly thought we’d learned as a country from the debacles in Iraq and Afghanistan and those of us who hadn’t become irremediable chuds could be more thoughtful in the wake of October 7th, but nope, even the progressives bayed for more blood. If there’s one thing I’ve seen in the wake of the election, it’s that the people who care are an unwelcome minority.
I know it’s not everyone and that I’ve probably done myself no favors with the amount of time I’ve spent online since COVID started, but I feel like I’m trapped in a death cult and it seems perverse to allow my body to continue it even after I’ve died. I’m considering withdrawing my organ donor registration and willing my body to science instead.
tl;dr: you can’t have my lungs unless you can recite The Internationale
*Side note: one thing I’ve discovered is that libs who are loudly proclaiming that they’re done helping anyone who didn’t vote for Kamala Harris is to express the hope that they don’t find themselves in need of help only to find it similarly conditioned. They all assume they’re going to be fine and the one in position to lend support and to imply the possibility of the inverse can lead to some really, really angry reactions.
and willing my body to science instead.
To approach your question: No, I don’t think you have to worry about your organs saving Dick Cheney. Rich people almost definitely have other ways to get organs and have some sort of priority, so you’re way more likely to save some poor person than you are to save some rich person who would have died otherwise. Rich people will always find a way for organs
Yup buy m6 organs fucking suck
Yeah, but I do think in the back of my mind that some doctor might give up attempting to keep me alive sooner because of it, even if only unconsciously.
I dunno, honestly I’m scared I could be killed by some transphobic doctor who assumes I’m better off as organ material than alive. And that could actually be legalized here soon.
I actually genuinely want to be an organ donor which makes this pretty fucked up
Hell yeah. I hope somebody gets some mileage out of these organs
i just figure if my body can do anything after i die that benefits life’s continuance on the planet, go for it. so yeah, i’m a donor. take whatever is left and do the green funeral / tree planting thing with it. or if that’s too expensive for the people making decisions about my remains, do the burial at sea. that one seems to be the cheapest and pretty energy efficient, and gets all the useless chunks of decaying out into the original ecosystem where the megafauna can get at it but won’t traumatize anybody because they don’t have to see it.
that said, i think any meditation or deliberation on posthumous legacy is a trap. to try to do right to the best of your understanding in the moment without attachment to the outcome is a path to liberation and all that. nobody is a 5D chessmaster, calculating all the angles and probabilities that will unfold over time in the complex system of material reality. at some point you have to surrender to the mystery of never knowing if the choices you made will turn out for the good.
but once i make a billion dollars i will have a gold leafed statue of me built so tall it can tear the stars from the sky, so that all who remain will blindly weep at the god-like, radiant beauty of my face forever.
I’m so powerfully good that, if they took my organs, they’d become good as a result of putting a piece of myself into their body. 👍
Yes
yes, obviously. if you aren’t youre a bad person
Death to America
I normally agree, but I know some minority groups are afraid they’re less likely to be resuscitated so a rich white guy can gank their lungs.
But yeah, signed up for organs and to be on the marrow list.
Rich/evil fuckheads get priority treatment anyway because we live in hell, so donating my own just increases the pool of donations and therefore the odds that there will be something available for normal folks.
Like if Cheney got my heart, then that means someone else’s heart is not going to him, and can instead go to someone who isn’t a monster. And maybe the latent spite in my heart can kill Cheney.
Communism is fundamentally about human dignity. We are so used to negating capitalism that we can forget that communism is also a definite, positive conception of the future.
Needing an organ transplant is a vulnerable, scary, and undignified position to find yourself. I don’t care who needs my liver when I’m gone. They are 99.999% not responsible for capitalism even if they are a random Trump supporter, and their suffering will not bring about communism. As a human being I am happy to reduce unnecessary suffering.
Comrades should embody the humanity that they want to see in the world, and let go of petty angers that do not substantially advance the cause.
Wise words
A great reminder. Thank you.
Yep. Working in emergency I’ve seen three important things:
-
What can technically qualify as “surviving” the sort of injury that would make me a candidate for organ donation. I don’t want to be a prisoner in my body and our MAID laws require that you can physically lift a cup of poison and drink it. Every part of that process seems unimaginably painful if I’m even capable of processing pain.
-
How bleak nursing homes are. If I survive that injury, the only place I can afford is one where a CNA makes near-minimum wage to handle 20+ patients with complex needs.
-
How hopeless being on the transplant list is. Organ failure seems absolutely torturous. With lung failure they come into emergency drowning on room air. With heart failure their legs swell until it’s like they have gout. Dialysis and liver failure are horror shows. Those people are forced to play a pain lottery to survive. If I go to my grave with my organs like a pharaoh I’m just killing X number of people arbitrarily as the last thing I ever do.
Working in emergency
-
Sure my organs could go to a bad person. But they could also go to a good person. I’m not going to run the risk of the latter dying just because the former might benefit.
yea
i dont really care what happens to my body when i die cos like. im dead im not using it lmao. also, my body is only “mine” so long as i inhabit it, if I don’t inhabit it anymore other people should get to use it
i think the hypothetical “but what if a really bad person gets my organs D:” is cancelled out by the equally as likely “but what if a really cool person gets my organs :D”
